It’s sad to see a country just fade away. I hope they can convince their people to breed more or let in more immigrants while still maintaining their culture.
> Wacky take since every country is a Ship of Theseus.
Yes and no. It is one thing where that ship is uses immigration as a source of "replacement parts", and another thing when it doesn't. The immigration method replaces old parts of the ship with different kinds of parts, the non-immigration method replaces old parts with just more modern/slightly different versions of the same parts.
US and the likes are absolutely a ship of theseus in my book, but Japan doesn't feel like it would be the same "kind" of a ship of theseus, given how ethnically homogenous and anti-immigration it is.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to argue here for which approach is "better" (considering that one approach being objectively better than the other in absolute terms is probably not even a thing). Gotta keep in mind that the originally immigrant-based ship that is the US isn't the same as the heavily homogenous ship that is Japan at all. Frankly, I don't know the answer to this, and neither was that the point of my reply. I just don't want the comment section to devolve into arguing which is better (immigration-based ship of theseus vs. a ship that is not affected by immigration almost at all). My original point was that "not all ships of theseus are the same kind", so one approach would likely not work the same way when applied to two radically different types of a ship.
You have to look at why the birthrate is low. People are working themselves to (nearly) death, and the worsening demographics is not helping. It's hard to commit to have three children (which is what everybody will have to aim for if the birthrate is to hold or grow) when you go to work in the early hours and come home after ten PM (or later, as people I know do), and when salaries haven't actually increased since forever. Japan getting poorer doesn't look like it would help. One thing which probably could help would be companies and the public system (e.g. schools) stopping ordering employees to suddenly move to some other city every few years. That's hard for aspiring families.
Japan's issue isn't even just working which only happens in so called black companies, the real issue(s) are tied to archaic tradions, norms and attitude.
Like how japan like most of Asia is so fixated on materialism with even marriage still being heavily influenced by it (hence why theres a lot of dysfunctional marriages in japan).
The people I know who would come home way after dark never worked for black companies, it's common to work that way in almost every area. And in education too - at my stepson's university the students were expected to stay in the lab until midnight, just to "show effort". Totally crazy.
Anyway, I'm glad to say that both my stepchildren married for love, not for anything parent/family-related. As far as I can tell the younger generation is quite different from earlier generations - which weren't all that bad everywhere either. However, the working conditions have not changed as much.
I hope they make a success story of what a stable country with a reasonable population can look like, although its incredibly complex to tell without the years to measure it
Well the lack of focus on family and making it economically, culturally and politically beneficial to younger people especially women to have children would be an extremely obvious one.
What do you mean by lack of focus on family? Having lived here for the better part of a decade I've seen the opposite and tend to view it as one of the defining characteristics of Japanese culture.
Things are changing policy-wise to make it easier to raise a family. They're moving fast in that regard and I've witnessed many of these changes firsthand since becoming a father, especially where paternity leave and childcare payments are concerned.
Exactly my question as well. Rarely you can find a country on world map where family values are cherished more. Luckily Japan has none of feminism, pronouns and related stuff.
Not impossible. Other countries could. Also remember that culture is a living thing, it's not static. It changes and adjusts and adapts and incorporates. My little hometown was just us "natives" in my childhood, now at the other end of time it has people and languages from more than a hundred countries, and we're all "natives" to this town. Very different from before, but much more interesting and I don't feel we have lost anything, culturally, from before.
Heterogenous cultures all end up looking kind of the same. Chaotic, disorderly, no common rules, little common ground. Like New York City or London or Toronto. Great for people who like novelty. But utterly different from Tokyo, or Salt Lake City, or other places where cultural homogeneity enables a sophisticated set of shared rules and norms.
I don't know about that. In my experience, with smaller places I'm familiar with, the cultural input only enriches, there's no degradation (though I am of course aware of certain areas of certain countries where they failed to handle immigration correctly and created isolated ghettos - that never goes well. But it does not have to be that way).
"sophisticated set of shared rules and norms" - I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I definitely get a bad feeling from a sentence like that though.
> “sophisticated set of shared rules and norms" - I don't know what that's supposed to mean. I definitely get a bad feeling from a sentence like that though
1) What does "sophisticated" mean in this context? What is a "sophisticated" rule, or a "sophisticated norm"?
2) If anything, "a [..] set of shared rules and norms" sounds like an environment which tries to enforce a strict template for how to behave and act and do. If that's really the case then it to me would be a terrible place to be. Like that backwater isolated village with some snooping crones keeping an eye on everything.
If you meant something totally different, please explain. Particularly the "sophisticated" point.
> 1) What does "sophisticated" mean in this context? What is a "sophisticated" rule, or a "sophisticated norm"?
The rules and norms are complex and encompass a wider and deeper range of behaviors.
> 2) If anything, "a [..] set of shared rules and norms" sounds like an environment which tries to enforce a strict template for how to behave and act and do. If that's really the case then it to me would be a terrible place to be.
Anti-social people don’t like it, to be sure. But it facilitates high trust societies that have lower social transaction costs. Paradoxically, it enables societies that have less formal policing and rule enforcement, because of the high level of informal policing and rule enforcement.
I most definitely don't see myself as anti-social, quite the opposite if anything.
I would like to see a more specific example of what you mean by sophisticated rules and norms. What would a real-life example be? I still don't get it, so I would be happy to learn what you mean by this.
Lee Kuan Yew's whole thesis re: Singapore was that multicultural societies need strict laws and punishments for those that step out of line because people don't naturally look out for each other. He learned this from going back to the UK in the 60s and seeing how social trust had degraded due to immigration.
Singapore is a counterexample to the grandparent post. It's very much a "heterogenous" culture, if the word "heterogenous" has any meaning at all, with four (!) official languages and a lot of immigration. It could not be described as "chaotic" or "disorderly."
The unsubtle explanation from someone who is not a huge Singapore fan (or from someone who is?) might be that this is simply the power of well-engineered, highly authoritarian government. But it's certainly not about choosing homogeneity or eschewing immigration.
Singapore is 75% Chinese, and immigration levels are calibrated to maintain that ratio. Accounting for religious diversity, US hasn’t been as homogenous as Singapore since the 1800s. And Singapore is also a country where the top-down authoritarian government is run based on the vision of LKY, who himself is distinctly inspired by a mix of Confucianism and Anglo culture. The other cultural groups are given wide latitude within their sphere of influence, but none have any imprint on the government and institutions. It’s like if Americans agreed that WASP culture would always dominate the government and civil institutions.
> Accounting for religious diversity, US hasn’t been as homogenous as Singapore since the 1800s.
This didn't jibe so I looked up the figures and I still don't understand why you'd write this. To be honest I don't understand why you've written most of what you've written on this thread, but, did you mean to write "ignoring religious diversity...?" The US is 63% Christian. The largest religious group in Singapore is the Buddhists, at... 31%? And unlike in the United States, two minority groups in Singapore (Christians, Muslims) have strong representation in the population, whereas in the US, not so much.
Which I guess would leave things like language, of which they have four official ones and quite a few others, with a bilingual education mandate that demands everyone learn English but recognizes that they've probably got their own as well, IIRC.
There's racial makeup, if that matters to you (I get the feeling it does). In terms of cultural dominance I would reject the idea that there's something massively different about a 69% white majority vs a 74% Chinese majority. The second on their list is Malay at 13.5% and the second on our list is Black at 12.4% and my God why are we even having this conversation
I'm pretty sure the explanation for the undeniable order there is the completely obvious explanation that does not involve "homogeneity" or immigration. It's the authoritarian system of government.
If you compare like with like, the US is more diverse on almost every dimension except language. Catholic/Protestant is a major dividing line. And if you are going to say “white” is a category, then Singapore is virtually 100% “Asian.” If you want to talk about ethnic groups, then the largest US ethnic group is German Americans, which are only about 25% of the population.
And yes the homogeneity helps Singapore’s orderliness. The overwhelming majority of the population is Asian, who in general are more collectivist and orderly than say Italians.
Gross. Anyways: after Jewish people, Mormons are the most pro-immigration religious group in the United States. Consider not using them as an example for the virtues of xenophobia, especially when making appeals to their distinctive culture.
Do you really think GP is arguing in favor of xenophobia? I'm undecided on this topic, but nothing they've said (that I've seen) suggests xenophobia. GP even indicates in a different area that they've traveled internationally, which is a difficult thing for xenophobes.
Unless you have somethign to point to that gives you confidence that GP is arguing the virtues of xenophobia, it's likely to be counter-productive to ongoing discussion.
Mormon society is well-functioning for the same reason that Japanese society is well-functioning. People share common values and culture which enables a high-level of social reinforcement of societal rules and norms. The Japanese realize that immigration would destroy their society. The Mormons don't, but that doesn't make it any less true.
I find the implicit moral assertion in your post inexplicable. Are you positing that you can have a high trust, high cohesion, orderly society that accepts lots of immigrants? If so, show me one. Otherwise, your position seems to be that immigration is a moral requirement in and of itself, regardless of the consequences it has for societal order.
> The Japanese realize that immigration would destroy their society. The Mormons don't, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Go back to the 19th century, and the LDS Church was heavily involved in encouraging people to convert to their religion and immigrate to Utah. Many of their missionaries in Europe were not just seeking converts, but also immigrants.
Nowadays, the LDS Church doesn't put any great emphasis on encouraging their overseas flock to immigrate to Utah. But if they changed their mind about that, I doubt LDS immigrants from Asia or Latin America would destroy the society of Mormon Utah, any more than 19th century European Mormon immigrants did. If anything, I think it would be less destructive than US intrastate migration of non-Mormons into Utah, which has been going on for a long time now.
I’m neither Mormon nor Japanese, so no. But I have visited Utah and Japan, and know quite a few people from both cultures. They share many common characteristics. (As someone from a different part of Asia, Mormons are the most relatable white people to me in terms of the relationship between individuals and society.)
No, not anymore at least. The church used to in its early days (mid 19th century) encourage immigration to Utah (aka "Zion"), but many years ago they declared that "gathering of Zion" should take place where people already are.
Modern-day missionaries try to build up the local church where they are. Some people do end up wanting to emigrate to Utah, but this is not something the Church encourages.
I didn't first realize that you were commenting my post - but I did say two things:
1) There's no such thing as a culture which doesn't change. Culture is a living thing. It changes, even if you never have a single immigrant. My parent's culture wasn't the same as mine, even back when there were no immigrants and hardly anyone coming from elsewhere in the country.
2) I also clarified in a later post that to me the culture is enhanced, i.e. there's more to it than before.
I definitely don't have any feeling of loss of culture, I guess that's my point.
Japan already has significant ethnic Korean and ethnic Chinese minorities. And Japanese culture has absorbed a great many influences from both Korea and China over the last 1000 years, so I doubt some more Korean or Chinese immigrants would make any great long-term difference to Japan's culture. It would just be more of what has already been.
How many individuals from those ethnic backgrounds might actually want to emigrate to Japan, I don't know.
In 2021-2022, China was the number two source of immigrants to Australia, after India. If Australia is more successful at attracting Chinese immigrants than Japan, the problem isn't availability of Chinese people wishing to immigrate, the problem is Japan's attractiveness as an immigration destination for Chinese people–and surely that's something Japan can improve if they try.
Also, there a lot of ethnic Chinese people in Australia who are actually from Malaysia or Singapore; Malaysian Chinese want to escape the discrimination of Malaysia's Bumiputera policy; many Singaporeans want an escape from Singapore's cramped living conditions (small apartments). So ethnic Chinese immigrants can be sources from places other than China proper.
Currently, China is the number two immigration source country for Australia, so a declining population in China doesn't prevent it from being a source of immigrants for other countries.
South Korea and Japan do have difficult relations, and they have been getting worse. But I remember visiting South Korea some years ago and talking to some of my South Korean colleagues about how they felt about Japan, and what I noticed was wide differences in opinion – some were still very angry at Japan for things it had done long before they were born, others were critical of their fellow Koreans' anti-Japanese sentiments. I suspect some of this is political – historically, many Koreans collaborated with Japan, among others Park Chung Hee, who served in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, and then became South Korea's military dictator in the 1960s and 1970s. Some right-wing South Koreans still have some sympathy for the 1960s/1970s military dictatorship, and hence tend to view collaborators with Japan more sympathetically; more left-leaning South Koreans are highly critical of both.
In any event, there are a lot of things which Japan could say to try to assuage South Korean feelings on these topics. Japan's problem is that saying those things would upset Japan's own nationalist bloc. But if Japan really wants to attract Korean immigrants, maybe upsetting their own nationalists is the price of that.
a) the fact that Japan's birthrate is below the number needed to sustain the current population
b) the fact that Japan is ethnically homogenous (98.5% ethnically Japanese), and has very limited channels for immigration, meaning that japan, with the policies that exist today, will not be able to significantly mitigate the population decline by accepting immigrants.
Japan takes a very different approach compared to countries like Canada, which is a melting pot of cultures and which has an increasing population largely due to immigration
Japan has a way to go, but gradually they're thinking more about immigration as a necessity, which was pretty much never an issue before. In those Japanese newspapers I read there are more and more articles about how local governments and also the national government are (economically) supporting companies giving language training to immigrant workers, with the idea that they want them to stay. Similarly, some cities are setting up programs which try to get foreign students to stay after graduation.
There's still much which has to change (see comments by others). But it's still a bit behind and the population will almost certainly continue to decline for some years, as it has for a decade now.
Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration. Japan is going to have to be more welcoming of non-Japanese people.
> Yeah, the US and Canada are the only two first world countries not slated for long-term population decline due to immigration.
Australia's immigration rate, on a per capita basis, is more than double that of the US, and somewhat ahead of Canada's. [0] It has a lower total fertility rate [1] than the US (1.73 for Australia vs 1.84 for US), but still a higher TFR than Canada (1.57), and I suspect having double the immigration rate is probably going to make up for the somewhat lower fertility. And I think you are missing more countries than just Australia.
While in absolute terms, the US accepts more immigrants than any other country in the world, on a per capita basis, its net immigration rate isn't particularly high, and is below that of many Western European countries.
Likewise, US total fertility, while high by Western standards, is not the highest in the Western world; France is significantly higher at 2.02; Ireland and Iceland also beat the US at fertility, and Norway is only just behind the US.
> And yet, Australia's population is slated to decline, while the US is not.
Slated to decline according to whom? According to the most recent projections published by Australia's national statistics agency, [0] Australia's population is projected to continuously increase through 2066, ending up at somewhere between 37 and 49 million (compared to around 26 million today). The only projection of theirs according to which it will decline is the highly unrealistic "zero net migration" scenario.
None of the countries you mention have ages old strong own culture to preserve really (except first nations but for various reasons their culture is not US or Canada culture).
So Japan's policy is not unreasonable. You can become a proper Japanese if you want to (are willing to culturally integrate), it's just that not many people do. Without it you'd be trading off death of country for death of culture. Contrast to China or Thailand where AFAIK you are always second class citizen legally if you are "wrong" ethnicity.
The question is legal equality, which seems possible and not depend on color of your hair.
Of course some Japanese will treat you differently. They will also otherize and treat differently even their fellow ethnic Japanese of other social classes. But I think this is not really different from British, Russian or many other cultures (maybe except US or Canada which are more melting pot like). It's just harder to notice from inside the culture.
this isnt true at all, in practice. there’s so much onerous bureacracy, kafkaesque visa policies, and the fact that even naturalised individuals will still be othered.
japanese nationality is tied to ethnicity so much due to how homogenous the society is
"othering" at social level probably exists, but you are mixing up culture and ethnicity, there is division and kind of caste system within "homogenous" Japan too, see burakumin issue for eg.
so legally for a foreigner the policy seems reasonable, just there is a lot of FUD spread by people who felt entitled to become Japanese with little effort and suffered reality check, see eg. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj855k5066o
This is nonsense. "Post WW2" describes current modern Japanese culture, not its root. The root goes way back to hundreds/thousands of years BC, they continuously lived on those exact islands and spoke a similar language all that time. Unlike US or Canada which are a new amalgamation of English/French/Spanish/German/Jewish/AA/Native/whatever cultures without any single root. Not to say US or Canadian culture is worse or better, just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique.
You might as well say that US culture has its roots in ancient Greece or Rome, or Reformation age Europe and claim it’s hundreds or even thousands years old. It would be worth about as much.
But yeah I agree with you in the sense that US/Canada are constantly affected by a constant influx of people belonging to different cultures.
Had there been barely any immigration after ~1800 American culture would be effectively as old and unique as the Japanese one. Quebec for instance is kind of (but not quite) like that.
> just there's objectively less to worry about not ruining something age old and unique.
Well they already did during the Meiji period and subsequently, what remains is not that significant.
Also what are your thoughts on Britain, Scandinavian and some other European countries? They would be effectively no different to Japan in this sense besides the fact that they have very large numbers immigrants.
> You might as well say that US culture has its roots in ancient Greece or Rome, or Reformation age Europe and claim it’s hundreds or even thousands years old.
No. Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Slavs, Turks, Arabs, Mongols etc, different peoples have their respective roots for sure, but those roots are elsewhere. Once you move across the ocean and mingle with a bunch of others coming from radically different backgrounds and histories, different mutually unintelligible languages and incompatible religions it's a completely different story than if you live at the same locality, speak the same language and carry broadly similar values and beliefs as N generations and thousands of years back. Except for first nations, people of US and Canada are still very much guests on their soil if you compare those timescales (actually even first nations may have settled Canada a bit later than Japanese settled Japan by skimming Wikipedia but that I'm not sure). From inside one of those new cultures (who are cool and unique in their own ways, sure) it can be easy to miss the significance.
One might argue that Christian European culture is a thing and that US was/is part of it.
> From inside one of those new cultures (who are cool and unique in their own ways, sure) it can be easy to miss the significance.
A lot of assumptions.. I live in Europe and belong to supposedly one of the fairly ancient cultures according to this definition. It doesn’t seem any less silly to me because of that.
Unless Japan is supposedly exceptionally special somehow in that regard? I don’t think it is, most unique things about its culture have their roots in the 19th or 20th century (just like European countries or the US).
> Japanese settled Japan by skimming Wikipedia but that I'm not sure
The Ainu might have. The settlers/invaders from China or Korea whose culture later developed into what we know as Japan only began arriving in the archipelago around 300 BC (so less ancient than the Greeks or Romans). Also much closer to the establishment of US than to first nation people migrating into the Americas.
Good point, it's special due to isolation, many countries in Europe do have traditions but no such policies like Japan's, to integrate migrants from wherever (slavic, middle eastern, african asian, other european countries etc.), so those cultures are now quite diluted.
US is literally built on immigration!! Millions of Germans, Italians, Japenese, Persians, Chinese, Indians immigrated to the US since the 18th century.
Benjamin Franklin was very worried about German immigrants in the US and he described them as "less intelligent", "aliens" and that they won't assimilate. Fast forward few decades later/centries later, Germans are one of the most successful immigrants group in the US, industrialising the country, creating financial institutions, and becoming military and political leaders, giving US presidents and generals.
Recently, Asian immigrants created Silicon companies. One of them is a trillion dollar company called Nvidia.
France has a huge success story with immigrants as well, the poles (Marie Curie), the Italians, the Portuguese, North Africans, etc.
There are certain issues here and there, especially with unregulated modern mass migration, but in my opinion, that's not a true representation of real immigration that has always happened since the beginning of time.
The fact that Sweden has integration issues with mass migration from war-torn Syria is a special case.
The whole history of France is a success story of immigration. The fact is that the 25% of far right xenophobes in France's population made it turn for the worse by souring our relationship with people from different cultures and religions.
Didn't you blatantly stated anything just a few comments before?
>Just because you blatantly state something without anything supporting your POW, doesn’t make it a truth.
Open a damn history book, do I have to mention 20 centuries of history?
> But blaming “far-right xenophobes” for what happened to France is something I haven’t seen before.
Well far-right people have been making sure immigrants are not welcome, make them life miserable, ruin their own existence, present them with fewer job opportunities, lie about their reason of being in the country, laugh at them, insult them, make sure they are not welcome in any other neighborhood than the ghettos they have been parked in in the sixties, make sure the schools in these neighborhoods are underfounded, make them has hard as possible to be integrated as school.
Then oh surprise, after 70 years of this shit, they complain that a fraction of these immigrants have turned sour, extremists or are criminals.
You couldn't pay me to live in France, it's a **hole. I know that's a low-effort comment, but it's important for some people to know what opinions others have outside of their "rainbows and butterflies" worldview.
> Was there a precedent in human history when this was successful? Ever?
The US is extremely successful (well economically, anyway..)
Because of immigration it will mostly avoid the aging issue (based on current predictions it should surpass China in population by the end of the century)
> Was there a precedent in human history when this was successful? Ever?
Most european countries, at their economic height, were the products of centuries of immigrations and invasions.
> It's a huge shame to observe what Europe has turned into with it's immigrant policies
What is a shame is how xenophobic people made of europe with their anti-immigration anti-acceptation practices and turned immigrants against them to make it worse for everyone.
Have you not noticed the issues Europe is having? And no one is even studying or discussing it, it's too taboo.
The West is in decline, and they're sealing their own fate because they're allowing themselves to be bullied, turning the other cheek out of politeness.
Are they? Even if it were the case, there are a lot of people in Europe that simple don't want or like black/brown people and people of other religions.
Most people I interact with that trust me enough to open up to me say as much. They're just being bullied and gaslit by niceness and the media.
> there are a lot of people in Europe that simple don't want or like black/brown people and people of other religions.
And the only answer you can give them is: deal with it, they are already here, have all rights to be here and will stay.
It makes me think about those retards who think they can forbid homosexuality. You like it or not gays exists, have been for millions of years and will forever. Even in countries when it is repressed.
Even oysters are smarter than those people you are talking to.
Europe in many parts seem to have failed to integrate many of the newer groups. Some have integrated well enough to be noticed. But Sweden well known for inclusivity have strange things happening in certain parts of country.
Japan's culture is 8000 years old. They are f**g amazing at so many things, from pottery to knives to amazing food.
Why shouldn't they be allowed to protect that culture if they want? Why does every country have to standardised down to some global culture that is all the same?
Of course we know the answer, that makes for a great global market and government, but it's amazing how it's the left that's actually advocating for this these days.
